[ANN][DASH] Dash (dash.org) | First Self-Funding Self-Governing Crypto Currency

[Bridgewater]

Just join a P2P Pool node or start your own node.

P2Pool does not appear to be a solution to the mining pool centralization problem. Almost no one uses it. Maybe if mining pools prove untrustworthy it will be used after that. Still I think my question deserves an answer. If the answer is yes I think it would be quite important.

It's not about trust--I don't see coinmine.pl ever trying to attack the network. That would be dumb. What I do fear is the possibility of a hacker briefly taking control of coinmine.pl (and/or others). I think it's been pretty effectively demonstrated that nobody is safe from hackers--not Target, not Heartland Payment Systems, not the federal government. Nobody.

I actually think it has a lot to do with trust.  Isn't that why miners choose one pool over another? They trust that the payout will be consistently good, that the operator is acting in the best interests of their coin/network, and especially the fact that the pool won't "get hacked."

The word "hacker" is only used to describe internal events to the outside world as an excuse for incompetence.  Like you said, the size of the organization is irrelevant -- it is all Gox!  It doesnt matter whether the attack/theft/whatever supposedly came from malicious parties within the organization, the organization itself, or an external 3rd party.

In the end, none of that matters. There are no "hackers" as it is an exercise in futility to classify and justify each and every lapse in security.  All that matters is that end-user trust/money (or decentralization, in this case) is compromised.

The blame lies wholly with
A) the users for putting their trust in an untrustworthy organization, and
B) the organization for not doing their due security dilligence  to maintain a trustworthy reputation.  

The problem is that we've relied so heavily for so long on the regulatory systems in place to protect us that we've forgotten these basic principles of reputation and trust.

So really, a well-intentioned mining pool that actually cares about its investment and continued profitability, won't ever "get hacked."  

[dnaleor]

Andreas Antonopoulos just gave a talk about protecting with bubbles vs growing an immune system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=810aKcfM__Q

At 20:48 he says:
"We are going to build bitcoin with encrypted anonymous private transactions."
(It would have been awesome for someone in the audience to yell out "Like DASH!" right after he said that.  LOL!)

Hmmmm.  How is that possible?  That would require a 2nd layer tech to keep 100% anonymous - so then not really Bitcoin?

Pseudonymous sure, but not 100% anonymous.  Video of the difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RVGpHZUKpw

Anyone else think it would be a good idea to get a question out about Dash at each of Andreas' talks?

seriosuly.... Anonimity in a second layer means counterparties, so that can by definition not be anonymous.

[dnaleor]

Waaaait, fun! Does this mean I can send a regular TX, and instantly double-spend it using IX, forcing any miner who mines the regular TX to get their block orphaned?

(TX Won) If you release a normal TX, then IX a moment after. In this case, the IX transaction doesn't get any signatures, so it would never get approved.

(IX Won) Alternatively, if you release them at exactly the same time and half of the network accepted the normal TX, when IX is confirmed the other daemons would undo the TX in the memory pool and apply the IX transaction.

I get it. To game the system, you need a masternode, and if you have a masternode, you're getting paid enough to not want to undermine people's faith in the currency.

Even if you want to game the system, you can't buy enough, it's just physically impossible, to win all the spaces in a quorum.  The quorums are chosen based on the miner's hash number.

So it doesn't matter if you want to buy up as many as you can in order to mess with the quorums, it only takes one masternode to disagree for the transaction to be rejected.

Evan just announced yesterday that he thought of another factor to throw into the quorum chooser.  The age of the Masternode.  The first 1/4 of the earliest dates contribute 2 to the quorum, then the next 1/4, and the next, and finally the latest Masternodes, the last 1/4 to be set up.  So if you haven't already set up a masternode in each of those periods of time, you'll have no chance of controlling a quorum (even so it was already virtually impossible already).  And if you want to buy and "old" masternode, you'll have to trust the seller that they didn't keep the private key (which would be stupid)

you do see the problem with this, right?

If someone buys/hires/bribes/hacks say 50 masternodes, you can disrupt the a lot of the InstantX transactions very easily

[dnaleor]

Well the market certainly appears to be confident

Or otoh needs to protect his investment and put up big walls.
If BTC starts to go up again, expect some big masternode holders to dump.

[toknormal]

you do see...

I think I could probably drive a bus through that chip on your shoulder by now. If it gets any bigger your arm will fall off.

[BrainShutdown]

[illodin]

If BTC starts to go up again, expect some big masternode holders to dump.

Is this FUD/trolling or are you giving investment advice?

[dark-sailor]

Please someone print this off as a flyer to hand out to the trolls.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34733248/nasa-wants-people-to-apply-to-be-astronauts

[pille]

If someone buys/hires/bribes/hacks say 50 masternodes, you can disrupt the a lot of the InstantX transactions very easily

Lets do the math. Currently there are 3300 masternodes in total. If Otoh wants to attack instant x with his 500 masternodes. The chance that all of the 10 random choosen instant x masternodes are from Otoh are 0.000000590407831743% or am I wrong? With your proposed 50 masternodes 0.0000000000000000246727918068%. Good luck. (My numbers may be wrong, please correct me in that case)

[illodin]

0.0000000000000000246727918068%.

[Lukas_Jackson]

you do see the problem with this, right?

If someone buys/hires/bribes/hacks say 50 masternodes, you can disrupt the a lot of the InstantX transactions very easily

Dude, you can't expect people to take you seriously when you post criticisms, receive a detailed answer from the developer, then without even acknowledging the points he made you just fire off more criticisms.

It marks you out as a lame troll with an agenda.

It is more personal vendetta now and this make him look even "better".
I will not criticise him for doing this because he could develop some kind of inteligence as a result.
Let him be like this. It hurts already.

[dnaleor]

If someone buys/hires/bribes/hacks say 50 masternodes, you can disrupt the a lot of the InstantX transactions very easily

Lets do the math. Currently there are 3300 masternodes in total. If Otoh wants to attack instant x with his 500 masternodes. The chance that all of the 10 random choosen instant x masternodes are from Otoh are 0.000000590407831743% or am I wrong? With your proposed 50 masternodes 0.0000000000000000246727918068%. Good luck. (My numbers may be wrong, please correct me in that case)

you only need to have one MN to vote "no" for an IX to fail. So you don't need every MN for every IX.

[splawik21]

...because 'some' knows better   

great pic !

0.0000000000000000246727918068%.

[ddink7]

Just join a P2P Pool node or start your own node.

P2Pool does not appear to be a solution to the mining pool centralization problem. Almost no one uses it. Maybe if mining pools prove untrustworthy it will be used after that. Still I think my question deserves an answer. If the answer is yes I think it would be quite important.

It's not about trust--I don't see coinmine.pl ever trying to attack the network. That would be dumb. What I do fear is the possibility of a hacker briefly taking control of coinmine.pl (and/or others). I think it's been pretty effectively demonstrated that nobody is safe from hackers--not Target, not Heartland Payment Systems, not the federal government. Nobody.

I actually think it has a lot to do with trust.  Isn't that why miners choose one pool over another? They trust that the payout will be consistently good, that the operator is acting in the best interests of their coin/network, and especially the fact that the pool won't "get hacked."

The word "hacker" is only used to describe internal events to the outside world as an excuse for incompetence.  Like you said, the size of the organization is irrelevant -- it is all Gox!  It doesnt matter whether the attack/theft/whatever supposedly came from malicious parties within the organization, the organization itself, or an external 3rd party.

In the end, none of that matters. There are no "hackers" as it is an exercise in futility to classify and justify each and every lapse in security.  All that matters is that end-user trust/money (or decentralization, in this case) is compromised.

The blame lies wholly with
A) the users for putting their trust in an untrustworthy organization, and
B) the organization for not doing their due security dilligence  to maintain a trustworthy reputation.  

The problem is that we've relied so heavily for so long on the regulatory systems in place to protect us that we've forgotten these basic principles of reputation and trust.

So really, a well-intentioned mining pool that actually cares about its investment and continued profitability, won't ever "get hacked."  

I do see your point, and I definitely agree to an extent. You're likely familiar with the following article, or at least the principles behind it, but I'll post it anyway: https://medium.com/message/everything-is-broken-81e5f33a24e1

The long-and-short of it is that yes, a lot of people are "hacked" because their security is garbage. Unfortunately, a lot of others presumably do the best they can and are still hacked due to the weaknesses in underlying software. As an example, consider an organization that did everything right, with good internal controls and so forth. Consider that this organization depended on SSL, and fell victim to Heartbleed. Is this due to poor security on their part? Not at all!

*You are probably correct 80-90% of the time though, I surmise. Most hacks come from a lack of security...often a pitiful lack.

[illodin]

If someone buys/hires/bribes/hacks say 50 masternodes, you can disrupt the a lot of the InstantX transactions very easily

Lets do the math. Currently there are 3300 masternodes in total. If Otoh wants to attack instant x with his 500 masternodes. The chance that all of the 10 random choosen instant x masternodes are from Otoh are 0.000000590407831743% or am I wrong? With your proposed 50 masternodes 0.0000000000000000246727918068%. Good luck. (My numbers may be wrong, please correct me in that case)

you only need to have one MN to vote "no" for an IX to fail. So you don't need every MN for every IX.

Afaik, 4 out of the 9 in the quorum can vote "no" and if the rest 5 vote "yes" the IX lock is on.

[pille]

With age-based quorums the chances are further reduced, or almost entirely eliminated. Selecting quorum masternodes from different periods in 'dash history' is a really great idea.

Wow, now I finally understood that "age-based quorums", thank you. This is amazing!

[ddink7]

Really interesting article, and my response to it:
https://www.saveonsend.com/blog/bitcoin-money-transfer/

This is an excellent, well-reasoned, and insightful piece. It would be better, however, without the obvious bias you have against the bitcoin community. Terms like "hypocrisy" don't add much to the discourse, and make it seem like you have a bone to pick rather than an objective, rational argument.

I do particularly like how you pointed out that the actual cost of money transfer using "traditional" methods is in fact quite low, and that much of the cost of using these services is in ordinary overhead, such as commissions, that would be present in any formal business that was based on bitcoin transfer.

I think the ultimate goal for bitcoin and other digital currencies is to make things so simple to use that people can send value from one person to another directly, without ever interacting with a middleman. Circle is one company that is working hard on that; it is now possible to send money with low or no fees directly to other people using Circle Pay. They use the Bitcoin network to send the transaction, but Bitcoin is never actually mentioned in the marketing. It's merely a back-office function.

Theoretically, if the Bitcoin software was more user-friendly and currency conversion was easier or a non-issue (due to a universal, stable bitcoin value), then Bitcoin could be used to transfer value from one wallet directly to another without relying on third-party companies.

In short, your arguments are valid if you are comparing for-profit "traditional" remittance companies with for-profit Bitcoin-based remittance companies. I think the ultimate goal of the Bitcoin community, however, is to cut all companies out of the equation and send money directly peer-to-peer for virtually free. The rub, of course, is that a rural Bolivian farmer can't do a damn thing with a bitcoin. IMO, that's the problem to solve.

[ArticMine]

...

Afaik, 4 out of the 9 in the quorum can vote "no" and if the rest 5 vote "yes" the IX lock is on.

Yes, This is close to optimal; however one does not get those extremly low probabilites of an attack based on rouge masternodes voting yes that are repeatedly presented. The mathematics of this is the Binominal Distribution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_distribution.

[ddink7]

With age-based quorums the chances are further reduced, or almost entirely eliminated. Selecting quorum masternodes from different periods in 'dash history' is a really great idea.

Wow, now I finally understood that "age-based quorums", thank you. This is amazing!

There you go! Another problem completely solved. Even problems I believed to be insoluble fall when Evan tackles them.

(Somebody asked a few weeks ago how you could prevent an insanely-funded organization, such as a nation state, from attacking Dash. I said I thought it would be impossible, as it would be with Bitcoin or virtually any corporation. Now we can see that even if the NSA or GCHQ bought millions of DASH and set up thousands of additional masternodes, at best they would only get a 25% vote in the quorum pool, because masternode quorums are now determined partially by age. Brilliant.)

[alex-ru]

Afaik, 4 out of the 9 in the quorum can vote "no" and if the rest 5 vote "yes" the IX lock is on.

I think the same.

And these constants can be easily and quickly changed in case of any real problems (not troll's fantasies).
What is about... let's say... "14 from 30" - it will reduce even current scanty probability dramatically.